A Kiss is Not a Contract
by Spoggly
Summary: Cuddy follows through on a threat and fires House. Now what?  Spoilers:  Once, there was a cop on this show.


Her phone rang again. _Again_. If she heard that strident jangle one more time, she was going to smash the entire thing against the wall and then rip the cord out through the plaster. Her assistant was out sick for the day, and House had apparently figured that out, because every single call that had been forwarded to her office throughout the morning had the same fucking number on the caller I.D.

She picked up the phone and slammed it back into the cradle - the last thing she needed to distract her from avoiding yet another lawsuit was the instigator of the conflict.

When her cell phone rang, she suppressed the urge to fling it through the glass door of her office and, calmly, _very calmly_, checked who was calling. _Wilson, thank God_.

"Wilson, what can I do for you?" she said, shuffling her paperwork into some superficial semblance of order.

"First off, you can not call me Wilson, it's a total mood killer. Unless you're into that kind of thing, in which case I'm sure Doctor Love could oblige."

"_House_? What are you doing with Wilson's phone? And _why_ won't you stop calling me?" The urge to scream into the receiver, or dig her rape whistle out of her purse and let it shriek into House's ear, was becoming strong.

"Look, I'm the one who was fired without notice here, I think I'm entitled to my one phone call."

"Without notice!" she laughed into the phone.

"You're cackling - that's never a good sign. It usually means you're about to unfold your leathery wings and disembo-"

"Shut up, House! I'm talking here," Cuddy snapped. "I gave you plenty of notice. I screamed at you that I was going to fire you if you so much as looked at that patient again and what did you do?"

"I cured him!"

"In a manner of speaking. In English, we would say you went against his express wishes and put him on a ventilator, told his family that his wild arm waving was actually a spastic twitch caused by the disease, and then left him that way for ten hours while you had your lackeys toss useless ideas around!"

"But I _cured_ him!"

Snapping the cell phone shut was definitely less satisfying than banging down the wired set, but getting to shut House off in mid-pointless explanation more than made up for it.

_No more distractions_, she thought to herself. _No more negotiation_. At some point she knew she would have to put her foot down, and this was it - the last straw, and whatever other metaphors she was sure she could dig out of her exhausted brain. Now all she needed to do was finish this preparation for negotiation with the Johnson family, who were only slightly mollified by Shawn's beginning recovery, and then hurry home and grab her spare key before House could invade her home in some new, demented bid for his job back. She couldn't spend all her time and resources cleaning up after him, and it was time he knew that.

By the time she finished that round of paperwork it was time for lunch - hummus again, but thankfully she had anticipated trouble and squirreled away a extra-large bag of M&M's earlier in the week. She slowly separated out all the blue ones to save for last, pushing them around her blotter with the tip of a dark pink fingernail.

Her office phone rang again. She contemplated blowing it off and concentrating solely on her color-coordinating, which would also have the joyous effect of allowing her to ignore the oncoming storm of House's wrath. Professionalism was one of her best assets though, aside from the more obvious ones, so she checked the dull screen. Her home phone was calling her. Her home phone. From her single-occupant home.

"I better have acquired a poltergeist in the last hour," she hissed, her voice pure ice in the speaker.

"Sorry, just me. I can do my best creepy eyes for you though."

"Don't bother, they bug out enough. How did you get into my house?"

"I made a copy of your key after the first blow-job - sorry, second lifetime blow-job. So I've only had this for a month, not decades. That would just be creepy."

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't call the cops on your crippled ass. I still have Tritter's personal number, you know."

"I have a proposition. Also, I'm standing right next to your grandmother's china set - so no contact with the pigs," he said, suspicious clinking sounds filtering through the connection.

"if you touch one painted rose on one teacup I will use those handcuffs you bought, tie you up, and castrate you," she breathed. A second later it occurred to her that jokes about the removal of body parts might be in poor taste, considering. House didn't slow down though.

"Listen to the idea and the serving platter survives - give me one hour tonight to change your mind and hire me back."

"What?" she laughed, shoving some M&M's into her mouth to fortify her against the oncoming insanity.

"Give me an hour tonight. I know you - don't think of it as a conflict of interest, think of it as advanced negotiation."

She considered for a moment, sharply crunching a red candy between her front teeth. It was true that, although she had followed through on the termination this time, it was highly unlikely it would last beyond the next disgusting plague patient. _Might as well get some pleasure instead of pain out of it_, she thought.

"One hour," she said. "Now stop tying up my phone line."


End file.
